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Biting the Hand that Fed You....


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A short article regarding Ford's new Terrain Response, and how the folks and Land Rover feel about it:

 

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/21/land-rover-to-ford-good-luck-with-terrain-management-just-rem/

 

 

lol... ya, yippie... lets not forget that ford picked them off the scrap heap and put millions of dollars into them over the years to save their sorry asses..

 

buahahaha.

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But it also illustrates exactly the mentality that Ford failed to weed out at Land Rover and at Jaguar.

 

What mentality? I worked at Ford Europe for nearly a decade and my dealings with Jaguar and later LR's people on the diesel engines were very positive, certainly far less insular and less difficult to deal with than Volvo (from a powertrain perspective at least).

Edited by Inselaffe
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What mentality? I worked at Ford Europe for nearly a decade and my dealings with Jaguar and later LR's people on the diesel engines were very positive, certainly far less insular and less difficult to deal with than Volvo (from a powertrain perspective at least).

 

Based on what I've heard from Austin as well, there were few problems on an engineer to engineer basis. However, Jaguar & LR management did not want to 'taint' their brands with excessive sharing with Ford products.

 

Even if you grant that the XType was a most ham-fisted endeavor (which it was), you had JLR management clinging to the notion that their custom engineered highly tailored specialized platforms were self-sustaining (which they weren't).

 

JLR are to BMW and Mercedes what the Tundra is to the F150. The volume that the F150 generates produces an incredible amount of R&D funding that Toyota has to funnel into the Tundra from outside sources. Ditto JLR. Mercedes' S-Class funds its own ongoing development. The XJ? Not so much.

 

JLR management, IMO, could not come to terms with the reality that Ford could not/would not continue to dump R&D funding generated by other product lines into their products.

 

IMO, Ford never had the proverbial 'come to Jesus' meeting with JLR execs where they were informed that their notions of what was sustainable were out of line with reality. The only viable option for JLR then was architecture sharing, a concept that neither brand's executives had any stomach for.

 

JLR management led a cooperative Ford along a primrose path.

Edited by RichardJensen
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We naturally wish our friends the best of luck with their new vehicle. We just want everyone to know where the system was invented. And that was right here at Land Rover.

 

Ford's response,

 

We also wish our friends at Jaguar/Land Rover the best of luck with their new masters, Tata.

We just want everyone to know who carried the cost of Jaguar/Land Rover programs for years.

And that was right here at Ford.

Edited by jpd80
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Ford's response,

 

We also wish our friends at Jaguar/Land Rover the best of luck with their new masters, Tata.

We just want everyone to know who carried the cost of Jaguar/Land Rover programs for years.

And that was right here at Ford.

 

Yours is better.

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